It’s still freezing cold outside and not really the weather for gardening. I can put on layers to keep me warm, but digging in wet freezing soil leads to freezing cold fingers. But I can at least do some picking up and general cleaning. When Nysse lets me us the bucket.

I started on a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in a long while.

Realized, then, that the last time must have been before we got Nysse. Because cats and jigsaw puzzles clearly don’t mix. And that’s not a surprise, I was all prepared – laying the puzzle on a felt puzzle mat so that I can cover it up when I take a break.

Except Nysse didn’t even wait for me to take a break, he jumped right up on it and started attacking my hands when I tried to assert some ownership over the puzzle pieces.

Fine – I’ll just work on it when he’s not there. It’s spring and he’ll be spending more time outdoors. I’ll cover it up in the meantime. He’ll probably sleep on it.

Except Nysse for once did not just want to sleep on the new thing, but for some reason took it as a toy, which he never does. Is the felt surface so intriguing? Does he feel the puzzle pieces through it? Who knows. In any case, I now cover the cover whenever Nysse is around (with a sturdy rubber cutting mat).

Progress on the puzzle will be slow like this.

Nysse tends towards overweight when given free access to food. We serve him his measure of kibble three times a day. If he demands more in between meals, he gets canned “cat-quality” tuna. If he is hungry for real, he eats it; if he was just feeling peckish, he ignores it.

Today I dished up some tuna and he was sort of not very interested in it. He was, however, interested in the activity in the sink. The sink is an interesting place and can contain all sorts of delights, from eggy whisks to buttery knives. Or empty tuna cans, for that matter.

Nysse was much more interested in the empty can in the sink than in the bowl at his food station. When he’d licked the can clean, I put his bowl with the actual tuna in it in the sink as well. And that suddenly made it worth his attention.

I use colourful, patterned melamine bowls for Nysse’s drinking water. (Although he often prefers to drink from planting saucers instead.)

I wonder what, if anything, he thinks of the bowls. Is his perception of colour close to ours at all? Does he mind the leaf-green bowl, or the violently violet saucer beneath it? Does he notice when I switch out the bowl to put it in the dishwasher?

Nysse, in my wardrobe, half asleep on top of a stack of my sweaters.

I almost got a photo of Nysse sleeping on top of Eric’s computer bag, which I believe is the least comfortable thing I’ve ever seen him sleep on. (Disregarding those that seem uncomfortable only because they are hard, but since he weighs so little, they probably don’t feel very hard to him.) But he woke up just as I was adjusting the white balance.

What is the opposite of a cheerleading?

Demonstratively sleeping right in the middle of my workout.

Nysse gets cat-quality tuna as “filler food” when he’s begging for more food even after he’s been served his three measures of kibble for the day, or between meals. If he’s hungry for real, he’ll eat the tuna. If he’s just feeling like having a snack, then he ignores it.

These cans are all of human-quality tuna, though. Ingrid eats them almost daily because it’s an easy and tasty way to get more protein in, for building muscle.

Cat being cat.

Nysse, owning my sewing pile.